A sleepless night of stomach pain and nightmares. At times I can feel quite despondent at these random bouts of illness which last all night.
This, however, led into a full day of work on Gunstorm 1 & 2. The primary jobs were Steam graphics for the store pages, this sort of thing:
There are about 15 graphics of specific sizes to create. This takes a remarkably long time; longer than formatting the manual.
I've also made a few little changes to the games. Gunstorm 1 now shows a "Press Space to skip" message during the Xodar intro, as Gunstorm II does. Pressing Esc or Space will skip, though not fire as you may want to blast away at Xodar's ship. Fire will skip in Gunstorm II however, as it's a standard in that game that fire skips all text screens. I also fixed the language selection, and several smaller things like optimising the nebula scrolling.
The changes are growing smaller and smaller, and sometimes backtracking, which shows that he end is nigh for the design. It's amazing how long it's all taken, I've made at least 100 changes to both games, which were supposedly 'finished' when I started. I've yet to test either with game controllers, or add any Steam integration. There won't be online stats/highscores stored because these are too easy to hack and fake, but there will be achievements for defeating Xodar, and for each eschelon of Gunstar points attained.
I've continued to read the Patrick Stewart book with happiness. I can relate to much, but also realise with sadness that there are elements of my personality that are very flawed compared to most humans. I remained silent and alone until I was well over 30, trained to be fearful of being with humans. Pat had done and experienced more by 19 than I had by 40. Still, the book attractively oozes enthusiasm for acting and I found myself reading out loud the Shakespeare quotes.
In other news, the remastered A Walk In The Countryside was launched yesterday, and the primary video of The Cat Phone Song. It has already had more views than the old (many years old) one. My videos are, gradually but certainly, more popular as each new one is released. The video for 'I Think You Love Me' has had over 300 views in just over two weeks, and is one of my all-time most popular for music, and there is a clear trend of newer videos, newer music, growing in popularity.
